Quick Shots: Good Chicago Bears draft but not great

Saturday

May 10, 2014 at 5:00 PMMay 10, 2014 at 8:43 PM

By Matt TrowbridgeRockford Register Star

This looks like the Bears’ best draft in 20 years, but GM Phil Emery still left me wanting more. First-round cornerback Kyle Fuller won’t beat out Peanut Tillman or Tim Jennings, but fills a need covering slot receivers as the nickel back. Chicago, trying to fix the worst run defense in team history, also landed two of the best six defensive tackles in LSU’s Ego Ferguson and Arizona State’s Will Sutton and in the fourth round landed the top running back (Arizona’s explosive Ka’Deem Carey) and strong safety (Minnesota’s versatile Brock Vereen) still on the board. All five could immediately help Chicago.

But safety Ha Ha Clinton-Dix could have helped even more than Fuller. Baltimore took defensive tackle Timmy Jernigan, whom many thought the Bears might draft in the first round, at No. 48, three picks before Ferguson. Houston got Notre Dame DT Louis Nix, another presumed first-round pick, one spot after the Bears took Sutton. The Bears had a very good draft, but could have had a spectacular one by taking Clinton-Dix and trading up four or five spots for Jernigan and pairing him with Nix.

Getting smarter

Since when do the Browns, Bengals and Vikings know what they are doing on draft day? The Browns got an extra first- and fourth-round pick by trading down and still got the top cornerback (Justin Gilbert) and QB (Johnny Manziel). The Vikings took QB Teddy Bridgewater with the last pick in the first round. And the Bengals got star corner Darqueze Dennard at No. 24, new starting center Russell Bodine in the fourth round and A.J. McCarron in the fifth round, where the two-time national championship QB is a low risk possible successor to Andy Dalton.

Rare QB bargains

The only QBs who fell farther on draft day than Teddy Bridgewater that I can recall are Dan Marino and Aaron Rodgers. That bodes well for the Vikings, but I’d still rather have Johnny Manziel. The Titans (No. 11), Jets (18) and Dolphins (19) all should have drafted Manziel before the Browns got him 22nd. Teams usually pick QBs way too high (see Blake Bortles at No. 3 for the Jaguars). These two went too low.